During our last time management tip, PAF Professional Development Advisor Mae Cooper discussed how to distinguish between the urgency and importance of activities in our work and personal lives. Urgency and Importance have a scale from low to high. Thus, while one activity may have low urgency, it can still be very important. Thus, it is beneficial to set time on a periodic basis to organize all of our activities and categorize them into a urgency-importance matrix, as presented below.
Activities that have both high urgency and importance, are the activities that we have to manage daily as they can lead to crises and pressing problems if left unattended. Urgent, though not important, are those activities we should do and avoid interruptions so we can finish quickly. Important but not urgent activities require us to focus on long term planning and values, where we set deadlines to achieve sections at a time. Lastly, activities that are not important nor urgent we should simply limit and minimize in our daily life.